ghdrepairsstore.com

Monday, June 21, 2010

Sweden’s first royal wedding since 1976 took place Saturday when Crown Princess Victoria, 32, married her long-time boyfriend and former personal trainer, Daniel Westling, 36. The ceremony took place at Stockholm Cathedral.

Over 1,200 guests, including many rulers, politicians, royals and other dignitaries from across the world, attended the wedding, which cost an estimated 20 million Swedish kronor. Victoria wore a wedding dress with five-metre long train designed by Pär Engsheden. She wore the same crown that her mother, Queen Silvia, wore on her wedding day 34 years previously, also on June 19. Victoria’s father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, walked Victoria down the aisle, which was deemed untraditional by many. In Sweden, the bride and groom usually walk down the aisle together, emphasising the country’s views on equality. Victoria met with Daniel half-way to the altar, where they exchanged brief kisses, and, to the sounds of the wedding march, made their way to the the silver altar. She was followed by ten bridesmaids. The couple both had tears in their eyes as they said their vows, and apart from fumbling when they exchanged rings, the ceremony went smoothly.

Following the ceremony, the couple headed a fast-paced procession through central Stockholm on a horse-drawn carriage, flanked by police and security. Up to 500,000 people are thought to have lined the streets. They then boarded the Vasaorden, the same royal barge Victoria’s parents used in their wedding, and traveled through Stockholm’s waters, accompanied by flyover of 18 fighter jets near the end of the procession. A wedding banquet followed in the in the Hall of State of the Royal Palace.

Controversy has surrounded the engagement and wedding between the Crown Princess and Westling, a “commoner”. Victoria met Westling as she was recovering from bulemia in 2002. He owned a chain of gymnasiums and was brought in to help bring Victoria back to full health. Westling was raised in a middle-class family in Ockelbo, in central Sweden. His father managed a social services centre, and his mother worked in a post office. When the relationship was made public, Westling was mocked as an outsider and the king was reportedly horrified at the thought of his daughter marrying a “commoner”, even though he did so when he married Silvia. Last year, Westling underwent transplant surgery for a congenital kidney disorder. The Swedish public have been assured that he will be able to have children and that his illness will not be passed on to his offspring.

Westling underwent years of training to prepare for his new role in the royal family, including lessons in etiquette, elocution, and multi-lingual small talk; and a makeover that saw his hair being cropped short, and his plain-looking glasses and clothes being replaced by designer-wear.

Upon marrying the Crown Princess, Westling took his wife’s ducal title and is granted the style “His Royal Highness”. He is now known as HRH Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland. He also has his own coat-of-arms and monogram. When Victoria assumes the throne and becomes Queen, Daniel will not become King, but assume a supportive role, similar to that of Prince Phillip, the husband of the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

The International Football Association Board (IFAB), the body that decides on the laws of the game, has decided to discontinue all experiments involving technology, and for the first time has also decided on the exact size of a soccer field.

Instead of pursuing the idea of using cameras or microchips in the ball to see if it has crossed the goal-line, the International Board wants to see if the introduction of two extra assistant referees can improve the quality of referee’s decisions.

FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke declared: “We have decided to freeze for the time being the goal-line technology and all technology experiments. We will look on these two additional referees and we avoid considering any goal-line technology during this time.”

FIFA President Sepp Blatter said the move was necessary to maintain the universal spirit of the game: “We have 260 million people directly involved in the game. If we maintain the laws of the game … it’s so easy to understand … We have to live with errors, football has to keep its human face.”

“We have to maintain the laws of the game in their simplicity. Do you want technical devices to take decisions? That’s why, after three years of tests with no conclusions, I am in favour of putting the whole thing on ice,” Blatter explained.

UEFA president Michel Platini agreed: “Football should stay human, but two more officials can help, especially around the goal.” Platini made the suggestion to freeze all investigations into technology and to try two additional assistants behind each goal.

Blatter said the system using the microchip “was very complicated, needing electrified lines on the field of play and other devices including antennae and when we tested it in Tokyo last year there was one mistake during the seven matches we used as an experiment at the Club World Championship.” With regards to the system using cameras, he pointed to “problems with players obscuring the views of the cameras, or of flares or weather conditions.”

The system of the extra referees will be tested at an upcoming FIFA or UEFA tournament, and a final ruling is expected at next year’s meeting, according to FIFA’s Jerome Valcke.

Hawk-Eye, the company that was working on the goal-line technology that is already being used for line calls in tennis, reacted with disappointment: “I’m livid, it is completely out of the blue… A year ago they met and gave us four criteria to meet and we have met all of them, yet they have kicked it out now… We have invested an awful lot of money and now we have no return on that investment,” director Paul Hawkins said. He said he was encouraged to continue research on the project only 10 days ago at a private showing for IFAB members at Reading’s Madejski Stadium.

While the Welsh FA were also against the idea, the English Football Association supported the use of technology and was hoping to start using it by next season. The FA clubs and referees supported the use of Hawk-Eye technology, said Mike Foster, general secretary of the English Premier League. A spokesperson of the Premier League said that “A lot of time, money and effort has gone into developing a system that meets all the criteria laid down last year.” The Scottish and Northern Irish FA also voted in favour of the goal-line technology.

FA chief executive Brian Barwick expressed his disappointment at the annual meeting of the IFAB in Gleneagles, Scotland: “We were in favour of goal-line technology but there will be no more experiments and it will not be back on the agenda next year, or in the foreseeable future.”

FIFA President Blatter denied ulterior motives for the decision: “There has been no change of heart. Referees make decisions, not machines… I have defended goal-line technology but it has become clear that such systems are too complicated and very costly. Nor would they necessarily add anything positive to the game and could harm the authority of the referee.”

Sunday, April 29, 2012

As many states across the US continue to struggle financially, many individuals, including some economists report multiple positive indicators for Texas.

The chief economist with Comerica Bank told media sources this week that most of the improvements are attributed to strong creations of jobs in both the energy and manufacturing and services sectors. More specifically, that report called the state’s recent job growth, “robust”.The state’s unemployment rate in March was more than 1% lower than the nationwide rate, according to recent data.

When asked her opinion about the state’s present economic trajectory, Chantal Woodhull, a middle school teacher in Tyler, Texas told Wikinews, “It’s getting better.” Other sources indicate slight improvements in the real estate sector.

According to a recent report, retail job growth in Houston outstretched all other states, increasing its number of workers by over 4%. Across the US, retail jobs are improving at a slow pace in many large metropolitan areas.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

A conservative Democratic United States senator has agreed to supply the key 60th vote needed for passage of a sweeping health care reform package. Senate Democrats have reached a breakthrough in their struggle to pass sweeping heath care reform legislation, lining up the 60 votes needed to overcome fierce Republican opposition. Senators met Saturday in Washington, D.C. during a driving snowstorm in a frenzied effort to move forward on President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.

The spotlight was on moderate Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who had been the last holdout as Senate Democrats raced against the clock and against determined Republican opposition to pass their health care bill by their self-imposed deadline of December 25th, Christmas.

Nelson said he is now ready to vote for cloture, which would advance the bill. “Change is never easy, but change is what is necessary in America today and and that is why I intend to vote for cloture, I intend to vote for cloture and for health care reform,” he said.

Nelson said he decided to support the bill after winning new concessions from Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to limit the availability of abortions in insurance sold under the new legislation along with millions of dollars in Medicaid funding for Nebraska.

The legislation would extend health benefits to more than 30 million uninsured Americans and impose new regulations on the health insurance industry.

Senator Reid of Nevada has been working for months to win over one holdout Democratic senator after another, repeatedly altering the bill to satisfy different demands. Reid says reform is essential. “The broken system cannot continue and it will not continue. When President Obama signs this bill into law, we will officially end the era in which insurance companies win only when patients lose,” he said.

Nelson’s support should pave the way for Senate Democrats to win the first of a series of crucial procedural votes scheduled to begin at one o’clock in the morning on Monday and set to conclude — if everything goes smoothly for them — with final passage on Christmas Eve.

Republicans have been using a number of parliamentary procedures to delay action on the bill, including forcing a reading on the Senate floor Saturday of Reid’s 338-pages of last minute amendments. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky responded to the apparent Democratic breakthrough. “And Democrats are forcing a vote on it, as I indicated, over the weekend, counting on the fact that the American people are preoccupied with Christmas and not paying much attention to what they are doing,” he said.

Republicans are unified in their opposition, saying the bill is too expensive and will not solve the problems with the current health care system. Senator McConnell dismissed claims by Democrats that the bill is historic. “The history that is being made here, make no mistake about it, the history that is being made here, is the ignoring of the will of the American people,” he said.

Senator John McCain of Arizona echoed those comments in the weekly Republican radio address saying, “Regrettably, there’s nothing in this legislation that effectively addresses the problem of health care hyperinflation. In fact, experts tell us the Democrat legislation makes matters worse.”

Democrats say they have been trying to reform the nation’s health care system for close to 70 years, ever since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in office. Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut was emotional as victory seemed within reach. “All we are trying to do is to guarantee that if you are a fellow citizen of ours, and you are struck with illness or a loved one is, that you will never again have that fear, that you will end up losing your home, your job, your retirement and your life savings because you have been afflicted with an illness through no fault of your own.”

If the Senate is able to pass a bill next week, it would be viewed as a major victory for President Obama. But the bill would still need to be reconciled with a health-care reform bill passed last month by the House of Representatives before the president could sign it into law next year.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Five people are dead following a murder-suicide in Miami, Florida today, after a man crashed a birthday party early Sunday morning. He informed the party-goers that they were responsible for his wife’s decision to leave him, and then proceeded to open fire with a semi-automatic hand gun. The guests fled the scene into the street, or found cover.

The man, whom police identified as Guillermo Lopez, 48, immigrated to the United States from Cuba about 10 years ago. There were about a dozen people in attendance at the party. He killed his wife, who had left him, and shot her daughter, her daughter’s boyfriend, and the boyfriend’s grandmother. They were killed at approximately 12:15am in Little Havana, Miami.

Police first responded to the 2800 block of Southwest 38 Court following reports of gunfire. Four bodies were discovered behind the house.

“It was chaotic. I can’t imagine what it was like in there,” said homicide detective Ervens Ford.

Lopez fled the scene in a red Toyota Tacoma pickup truck to his home, which was about 3 miles (5 km) from the original scene. He set both the house and truck on fire and committed suicide.

Police and firetrucks responded to a second 911 call regarding the blaze at the 700 block of Southwest 33 Avenue where the assailant’s body was found with a gunshot wound.

The victims have been identified as Lazara Mendez, 50; Nayla Canfux, 19; Francisco Casas, 27; and Maria Lefran Christ, 77.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Andrew Martinez, a former student at the University of California at Berkeley who was better known as “The Naked Guy” in the early 1990s, committed suicide on Thursday. He was 33.

Guards at the Santa Clara County Jail reportedly found Martinez unconscious in a jail cell, with a plastic bag cinched around his neck, at about 11:19 p.m. Wednesday. Martinez was taken to a local hospital where was pronounced dead early Thursday. He had been incarcerated since January 10 on charges of battery and assault with a deadly weapon.

Martinez is best known for attending his classes in the nude in the fall of 1992. He became an instant celebrity, appearing on national television talk shows where he defended his practice as a form of free speech and a challenge to sexual repression in Western society.

Martinez was eventually expelled from UC Berkeley for violating the school’s code of conduct, and Berkeley city officials passed a strict anti-nudity ordinance.

Family and acquaintances report that Martinez had been suffering from undetermined mental illness over the past decade for which he never found comprehensive treatment, and had been in and out of halfway houses, psychiatric institutions, and jail.

Said close acquaintance Bryan Schwartz, a civil rights lawyer in Washington, D.C., “He was a person with tremendous gifts and charisma who could have been a great asset to our society, but instead I feel like society — me included — failed him. It’s such a waste.”